Why do councils bother with public consultation when, it seems, they don’t even listen to what people have to say?

I’m asking that after the announcement by the Christchurch City Council that it wants to put another $15 million into the reinstatement of the Anglican Cathedral.

That’s on top of the $10 million the council has already committed to the project.

I’m asking because, even though only a minuscule amount of people have told the council that it should, it wants to do it anyway.

Back in February, the council launched a public consultation process to find out whether people thought it should give more money to the cathedral or not.

Only 14 percent of the people who took part said it should, which equates to less than 200 people.

Nevertheless, the council wants to go ahead with it anyway.

To be slightly fair to the council, it only wants to give the cathedral project half the amount it was asking for.

You’ll remember too that the cathedral reinstatement people said they wouldn’t be looking elsewhere for money until the council coughed up.

Which, as I said at the time, was very arrogant.

So they haven’t got exactly what they were after, but it looks like they’re going to get another $15 million.

The problem with public consultation, of course, is that a lot of people just don’t bother.

Either because they don’t have the time or inclination, or they just don’t have faith that they’ll be listened to.

And I know that, even when you run a consultation process, not everyone’s going to be happy with the outcome, because everyone has different opinions on things.

That said, though, how the Christchurch City Council can even think that 14 percent is some sort of ringing endorsement for more ratepayer money being spent on the cathedral, I’ll never know.

Handing out another $15 million makes a mockery of this consultation process.

The council will probably try and defend itself, pointing out that this $15 million will only go to the cathedral if they can manage to get money from elsewhere too.

The council will also point out that it will only hand over the money if the church sells some of its property to put more money into it itself.

And it might even say something about 14 percent explicitly supporting it and another 51 percent not having an opinion either way.

But that still leaves the 35 percent who said they were explicitly opposed to more council money going into the cathedral.

A final decision is expected on 26 May, but the fact the council is even considering it tells me that it shouldn’t have even bothered asking what people think.

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